IN03210 Nilagama Rock Inscription of Daḷa Mugalan

This inscription is engraved on a rock at the northern end of the village reservoir at Nilagama, behind a huge boulder which contains an ancient Buddhist cave-temple. Edward Müller mentions the Nilagama Vihāra in his Ancient Inscription in Ceylon (1883: 46–47, no. 79) and discusses certain inscriptions at the site but he makes no explicit reference to the present record and it is not clear whether he was aware of its existence. The first definite record of the present inscription dates from 1935, when the text was copied by an overseer working on behalf of Senarath Paranavitana. On palaeographic grounds, the epigraph can be dated to the sixth or seventh century. It is a private document and records that certain named individuals freed themselves from slavery in the Nilagama Tisa-arami Raji-maha-vahara by paying a hundred (kahāpaṇas?) each. The Nilagama Tisa-arami Raji-maha-vahara was clearly the ancient name of the monastery on this site: Nilagama remains the name of the village to this day, indicating that it has been in continuous occupation since the time of the inscription; the monastery itself was called Tisa-arami, presumably because it was founded by a king named Tissa.

The inscription is dated in the reign of a king styled Mapurumu Budasa Daḷi-Mugalana Maharaji Apaya. The word expressing the regnal year is not entirely clear and can be read as either paḍama (first) or aṭama (eighth), although Senarath Paranavitana reckoned the latter more likely. As for the king, only ‘Daḷi-Mugalana’ can be treated as a personal name. The rest of his appellation can be disregarded as mere titles, since the same epithets appear, either together or separately, in the names of other kings. ‘Mugalana’ is obviously the same as Pāli ‘Moggallāna’, which is the name of three kings mentioned in the chronicles. Moggallāna I can be discounted, since he is nowhere mentioned with the soubriquet ‘Daḷi’ or similar affixed to his name. The same logic cannot help to decide between Moggallāna II and Moggallāna III, since the Sinhalese Pūjāvalī refers to the Moggallāna II as Daḷa Mugalan and the Cūḷavaṁsa states that Moggallāna III was surnamed Dalla. However, if we follow Paranavitana’s reading of the regnal year as the ‘eighth’, then it follows that the king in question must be Moggallāna II, who is said to have reigned for twenty years, and not his later namesake, who ruled for just three years. Geiger dates Moggallāna II’s accession to 537 A.D.